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I wish I could count the number of times I have attended a non-profit strategic planning session, or discussed the need to have (or update) one in a board meeting, or been invited to serve as the facilitator. It has always – always – struck me that the strategic planning session should just be starting about the time that it is actually ending (e.g., too much time is wasted at the beginning and then a frenzy results at the end). The purpose of this article is to outline some observations over 30 years of strategic planning experience and to share suggestions that will improve the chances for a successful outcome.

Holding a Strategic Planning Session 
At some point in time, every member of a non-profit board is going to hear the suggestion: “let’s hold a strategic planning session!” from a fellow board member or staff member. It’s not a bad idea but, unfortunately, it’s often a waste of time and produces no measurable outcomes. I want to share some observations and thoughts about strategic planning – invite debate – and see if we can come up with some guidelines that make the investment of time worthwhile. I have often said that strategic planning is a ‘process’ and not an ‘event’ – and I still very much believe that statement is true. However, maybe I should also add the caveat that a successful ‘process’ does indeed require an ‘event’ – or series of events – which is precisely the point. If you agree with my belief that the event often ends about the time it should be starting, then you would have to agree that additional follow-up after the event is required in order to create a meaningful strategic plan because the plan stopped short of completion during the original event. And a lot of time was used inefficiently, which also makes people reluctant to participate in the future. 
  
A Working Document 
Without a doubt, the primary way that I judge a successful strategic plan is by seeing a copy of it a year after the ‘event.’ If it’s a bit too dusty (which is often said in jest, but is true!) and if the pages are in pristine condition, then the event that created the plan was obviously not successful in motivating action. However, if the copy is dog-eared, marked up, added to, pages tagged, and otherwise well-used; then the event was super successful because a ‘process’ was indeed born and the need for ongoing action was instilled. In my opinion, successful outcomes are too rare in the strategic planning ‘implementation’ phase. The copy of the strategic plan that I described as a success is one that has become a working document, which is what planning is all about. 
  
Defining ‘Strategic’ 
From an analytical standpoint, one way to define something is to determine what it is not. Strategy is different from ‘tactical’ or ‘operational’ (which is actually performing a task). Strategy is more subjective and cerebral; it involves thinking about an issue in broader terms than usual; thinking about circumstances that do not currently exist (i.e., future oriented) and determining how to adapt the organization to benefit from those predicted opportunities or avoid anticipated threats. Often, it involves thinking about an issue totally differently than ever before (which is VERY hard to do). Strategy development is not the same as operations implementation. For example, when I have been invited to ‘do’ strategic planning for an organization, I always ask if there is an Operating Plan; i.e., if you don’t know how to perform your core business every day (Operating Plan), why would you want to spend time working on a future-oriented process (Strategic Plan)? Strategy (highly subjective) is the opposite of operational (highly objective/defined/specific). Objective is ‘cut and dried’ – there is a procedure/process/outcome that arises from certain actions, done at certain times, in a certain way to produce known/certain outcomes. We already know if we do these certain things what we will get. Most people can adequately perform what they are taught/instructed. However, developing strategy – even the process of thinking about it – is very different. A strategic planning session led by a ‘doer’ instead of a ‘strategist’ and ‘critical thinker’ will yield disappointing results; however, ‘doers’ can be very helpful in participating in the development of strategy if they are properly guided. A couple of very simple examples of strategic vs. operational issues will make the point:

Let’s start by talking about strategic focus. Leadership models and new business models are key ingredients to success in the 21st century. The successful 21st century business model is built around servant style leadership with a focus on strategic thinking by harnessing the creativity and innovation of the employees. The vehicle to accomplish this is the strategic planning process
Strategy serves as the organization compass and roadmap to future success. Strategic thinking must be clear and communicated effectively throughout the organization. It is not something you can leverage with technology. It isn’t something you will find in the latest business manual. It is embedded in the minds of your management team and most of your employees. It is your employees who are on the front line and know what is really going on with your customers and your markets. It requires effective leadership to release the power of the employees in building a strategic roadmap to the future.

Defining objectives and developing initiatives and action plans to meet those objectives is the basis of strategic planning. However, it all starts with an end game, a “Vision for the Future.”

Strategic planning is a management tool. It is used to help an organization clarify its future direction – to focus its energy, and to help members of the organization work toward the same goals. The planning process adjusts the organization’s direction in response to a changing environment. Strategic planning is a disciplined effort to support fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does and why it does it, with a focus on where it wants to go and how it is going to get there.

Fundamental decisions, actions and choices must be made in order to develop a plan that provides a Roadmap on “How to get there from Here.”.” The plan is ultimately no more, and no less, than a set of decisions about what to do, why to do it, and when and how to do it.

The scope of the strategy development process for any company is dependent upon individual business needs. The strategic planning process is a time and resource-consuming endeavor that involves many people in the organization. This process includes both tactical and strategic application. The DIY process assumes that you have a good handle on both your internal and external environment. If you don’t you may want to consider hiring a consultant to do an internal assessment and survey your customers and vendors to analyze your external environment.

Hiring a consulting firm can cost as little as $10,000 for a simple two day facilitation to upwards of $100,000 for comprehensive involvement by the consulting firm during the entire process.

So, if you are not inclined to hire an outside consultant, you may want to follow this ten step process for DIY (Do It Yourself) Strategic Planning. Although it isn’t possible to describe in great detail the entire process in an article (it would require 50 pages) the following is an overview of the process.

The Ten Step Process

Let’s identify the steps first and then we’ll discuss each one in a little more detail . I cannot emphasize enough that the true value of a strategic plan is not in the document itself. It is in the process of creating it, involving many of your employees from the bottom up. This empowers them to be more effective and better-informed leaders, managers and decision makers.

Each of the following strategic planning mistakes is costly. In fact, committing any one of them could kill your strategic plan. Following the description of each is an instruction on how to avoid the mistake.

Mistake number 1: Arbitrarily selecting your planning team members

Many managers give insufficient consideration to choosing their planning team members. They simply select a few senior managers with too little thought about their potential contribution to building a viable strategic plan. Also, they don’t consider whether each team member is positioned to drive the successful implementation of the resultant strategies.

How to avoid this mistake: Consider carefully the selection of each and every member of your planning team. And keep these two criteria in mind:
o Willing and capable of strategic thought – to assist in the development of your strategic plan.
o Positioned, in the organization, to drive the successful implementation of your resultant strategies.

Mistake number 2: Thinking of strategic planning as an event, rather than a process.

Some managers will set aside time to develop their plan. So far, so good. Unfortunately, they’ll then adopt – and communicate – an attitude of “let’s get it done and get back to work.” Clearly, they fail to integrate their plan into the day-to-day operation of their business.

How to avoid this mistake: Adopt the attitude that planning is an integral part of the operation of your business. In fact, your strategies, once detailed, will become a description of work to be performed. So when you and your planning team “gets back to work,” they’ll be working at accomplishing your strategies.

Mistake number 3: Not educating your planning team members to the strategic planning process.

Believe it or not, some planning teams enter their strategy sessions “cold” – without first learning the process in which they’re about to engage. This is a terrible mistake – for two reasons. First, the resultant lack of understanding seriously affects performance. Thus the quality of the resultant plan – and the strategies within the plan – suffer. Second, failure to educate the planning team misses the opportunity to build enthusiasm among the team’s members. The quality of their discussions, the resultant strategies, and the implementation of those strategies all suffer.

How to avoid this mistake: Conduct a Strategic Planning Workshop for your planning team members. The workshop will not only educate, but also build your managers’ enthusiasm for the process. And make sure that the workshop includes a case study – so your team members will experience building a “mini strategic plan.” While doing so, they’ll extend their thinking to your own organization. They’ll then be eager to apply the process “in real life.”

Mistake number 4: Not involving employees beyond your planning team members.

Some managers don’t even think about asking employees (beyond the planning team) to help. This mistake guarantees that the organization will miss valuable input. Also, it will squander the opportunity to build enthusiasm for implementation of the resultant strategies.

How to avoid this mistake: Consider the many ways to include your employees in the process – both for the benefit of their input, and to build their enthusiasm. For example:
o Providing thoughts (through interview or survey) on issues to discuss
o Assistance in gathering pre-planning information
o Detailing resultant strategies through development of action plans (lists of tactics)
o Estimating resources required to accomplish strategies
o Implementation of resultant strategies

Mistake number 5: Ignoring the question of timing.

Some assume that any time of the year is as good as any other for developing strategy. Not true. Planning out of phase with your budgeting process will leave you trying to implement this year’s strategies with last year’s resources.

How to avoid this mistake: Make sure your timing is such that your strategies “feed your budgeting process.” That way, you’ll be able to allocate resources in support of your strategies.

Strategic planning only helps organizations when they are kept active and implemented. The strategic plan defines the business direction. That direction is based on the future, the vision of the company. Before an effective strategic plan can be developed a clear and compelling vision is needed. Visions are optimistic, the ideal picture of the future. The strategic plan that results from the leadership team’s strategic planning is the map to that vision and then it is only effective if it is implemented.

Strategic plans can sound intimidating and overwhelming to many small business owners. The most effective strategic plans are those that are simple, completed with the leadership team and key people in the company. Complex documents that consume excessive amounts of time to create don’t guarantee success. In fact, the large and cumbersome strategic plan can be so overwhelming that it just doesn’t work. Strategic planning sessions that go on and on for months also fail because so much time is consumed in the planning and the implementation, which is the key, is pushed aside. The goal to have the perfect strategic plan doesn’t produce results. Instead, the team that engages in strategic planning and produces a good working document is more likely to succeed.

To create your strategic plan:

Start with vision. Write down what you envision for the future. What does the future of your business look like? What do you want for the future? Vision stories are inspiring, it’s your dream. Once you have created your vision you can begin building strategies.

The vision is the destination, where you are going. The strategies are the map that gets you to the vision. Company values are the guide or the “compass” in our map metaphor for making decisions along the way. Values keep you oriented and in alignment. When values are out of alignment the company is off track; not moving in the direction of the vision.

Strategic goals can be limited to the top 6-10. By having fewer goals the plan is able to stay alive and in front of you and the team. By alive, it means that the plan is always where you can see it, use it and keep working on it. It means that the team is focused on the strategic goals at all times, talking about them, brainstorming on them and reporting to each other their successes and challenges.

To set strategies for your business first look at the vision, the different aspects of the vision. Brainstorm all of the goals, all of the strategies for each aspect of the vision. With brainstorming it is important to get all of the ideas out and write them down without judging them or editing them. Often the best idea comes from an idea that at first look seemed too wild or crazy. Ideas jump off of other ideas.

Once you have brainstormed all of the possible goals, prioritize them. Often strategic goals can be grouped with similar strategies. This can help in the prioritization process. The goal is to narrow the list down to the top 6-10 strategies. What are the goals or strategies that will give your business the future you envision, that will create a breakthrough that will produce the results that you want? Those are the goals that you should be selecting as top priorities.

Creating a powerful strategic plan is just one of the first steps. Many organizations have strategic plans that are well thought out and crafted. Where they fall short is in the implementation of that plan. Implementation is the key. If you fail to implement, the results will not be what you set out to achieve.

Implementation is the result of focused and continuous action. Strategic plans don’t just happen on their own: they require your attention. By keeping the plan in front of you and the team responsible for the plan, focus is maintained. Regular meetings about the plan also keep the plan moving in the right direction. Check-in meetings hold people accountable. When teams don’t meet and don’t keep their eye on the plan, the day to day interferes and the status quo remains. In order to make changes in the results that you achieve there has to be intention and commitment on the part of the team. The check-in meeting gives the team the opportunity to review what is happening, what is interfering with the results they want and need and make the changes necessary to change the outcomes. Through the intention of the leadership, the plan and the team, the culture of the workplace can shift from one of non-performance to one of performance focused.

Performance focused companies are companies that are thriving. The energy of high performing teams shifts the energy of the whole organization. It becomes more positive and contagious. People become excited about the vision, the plan and their implementation of the plan. Results create energy and excitement that keeps the plan moving, it propels the plan and the ultimate results of the company.

After a few years of strategic planning, management teams almost always ask, “How can we put life back into our strategic planning? We’ve achieved great success, but we’d like to have the same level of excitement we had in the first few years.”

This question often comes up for reasons that are inherent in the process itself. First, strategic planning – as an ongoing process – tends to yield easy benefits in the first couple of years, as your team focuses attention on the low-hanging fruit. After a couple of cycles of this, the fruit that is left may seem to be a little harder to reach…and often, it is. Secondly, if your process is well-run, each cycle of planning will seem more like a part of your management routine and less like a special event. This is true of any process that you repeat routinely, but with strategic planning, the first couple of years seem strange and wonderful because good strategic planning is so far outside the norm for most managers. Finally, as your team gains experience with the process of identifying strategic objectives and effectively implementing them, they also learn how much work is involved…and there may be a natural reluctance to commit to the big, exciting projects that bring so much energy to the first few years of strategic planning.

Over the years, I’ve developed exercises to give the ongoing planning process a little more “zing”. In general, these exercises fall into 3 categories:

1. Making the strategic plan more personal – many plans lose their “zing” because they seem to be about someone else…so identifying how individuals affect – and are affected by – the strategy can help reverse this.

2. Giving the vision more substance – sometimes, the vision encompassed in your strategy is too abstract for the team to “get into it”. In these cases, some work on what the reality of that vision will look like can be just the thing.

3. Drilling deeper into specific parts of the strategy – in many cases, there are things just below the surface that can dramatically transform your company. A little digging in some specific areas can turn up gold!

Make it More Personal

While personalizing the strategic plan is one of the most effective ways to bring energy and commitment to it implementation, it’s also one of the most difficult ways to do this. This is because, unlike many of the variables of the strategic planning process, the complexities of the personalities involved pose analytic difficulties that are both broad – covering a wide range of possibilities – and deep – making them far more difficult to unravel than, say, a question of market responses to certain product changes. Even so, there are some ways of working with the personal nature of involvement with your strategic plan that can yield excellent results

One way of driving home the personal nature of commitment to your team’s plan is to bypass personality issues and address the question in a fairly neutral way. An exercise I often use to do this involves asking the team members to identify exactly how they envision themselves contributing to forward motion along the lines of the strategy, and how they see themselves (and their activities) creating obstacles to that same forward motion. As you might guess, it’s much easier to get team members to discuss their positive roles in a group setting. One way around this is to reduce the initial interactions around this to a one on one conversation. It’s also a great exercise to have team members pair up and discuss the positive contributions, then have each member report on the positive elements of his/her partner.

To reassure the team, I like to tell them that this exercise is not about who is the best, or who has the least weaknesses. Instead, I point out that the greatest opportunity in this exercise lies in our ability to find the best adaptations to existing weaknesses – and that the more obstacles we can identify, the more obstacles we can get out of our way.